The Underground Girls of Kabul Read online

  In essence, it is the tired old attempt to dismiss a rape victim—did she wear something provocative? If so, she is responsible, at least in part, for being attacked. The idea that men are savages who can never control themselves was always a great insult to men, as it implies that men have no functioning minds that at any time could overrule very aggressive impulses.

  The Koran, just as the Old Testament, has passages where modesty in clothing is advised for both men and women. But what exactly constitutes a modest, pious, and pure woman is nowhere explicitly prescribed in the Koran, and varies with its many interpreters. Veiling predates Islam and was originally a privilege for noble women only, to symbolize their sexual exclusivity to one man. Setareh, like most women here, covers her head, but when she crosses the border to visit relatives in Pakistan, it is more important that the scarf also obscures her chest. Up north, women sweep big sheets of fabric, the chadori, around themselves, sometimes even as an additional layer under a burka. Around Kabul, young women let the scarf slip, and each time we are alone, Setareh shakes out her long, shiny hair and runs her fingers through it to make it come alive, in a gesture of relief and pleasure. Zahra, on the other hand, would have shaved her head, had her mother not forbidden her from doing it.

  AS WE PASS a small vegetable stall on our walk around Zahra’s neighborhood, where dusty oranges, carrots, and apples are for sale, she proudly mentions that it was the scene of a fight last year, in which she took center stage. She had been walking with one of her younger sisters when they heard a hissing sound behind them; somebody was trying to snare the attention of the younger sister. “Shht-shht-shht.… Shht-shht-shht.…” The sister bowed her head and tried to walk faster, but Zahra would not let the insult pass quietly. She flipped around and yelled at the young man.

  “Shame on you—shame, I say—you almost have a beard, and you are flirting with a child.”

  At first, the teenager seemed surprised and took a few steps back. But then he picked up a stone and threw it at Zahra. She ducked, and the stone hit a car behind her. Infuriated, Zahra went on the attack. She kicked him in the stomach and tried to punch his face. The boy fell to the ground but managed to throw another stone. That one hit the side mirror of the parked car. When two policemen from the park came running, Zahra explained the situation. Her eyes were angry and her heart was on fire when she spoke: The older boy had been inappropriate with her sister, who was only twelve.

  The police agreed and shared Zahra’s indignation after taking a quick look at Zahra’s younger sister—she was properly dressed in black, with a head scarf tightly pinned over her hair. She could not be suspected of having provoked the young man’s behavior. Concluding that, they began to beat the young boy. A local shopkeeper also joined in. After a few kicks and punches, they dragged the boy away, in the direction of the police station. He would spend the night in jail.

  I look to Setareh for guidance, who fills in the blanks as Zahra finishes the story: “It’s the role of the bigger brother to protect the honor of younger sisters. A brother should challenge those who are rude to them.”

  The older brother would be Zahra, in this case. Young girls, in Zahra’s opinion, should have no contact with boys before they get engaged or married. A brother’s greatest fear can be that his sister will fall in love with some boy of her own choosing. Such a crush would be disastrous for the family. The sister could be tainted and unmarriageable later on.

  Young men are not to be trusted, Zahra says. They can make promises to young girls, only to later withdraw them when the girl is already shamed and tarnished from speaking to a boy and thus suspected of no longer having a pure mind.

  I ask Zahra, to make sure I understand: “So girls should not be friends with boys before they get married?”

  She shakes her head no. Absolutely not.

  “But you hang out with boys?”

  “Only my neighbors.”

  Even though Zahra plays the overprotective male with her sisters, she shares no loyalty with other boys. She is not one of them; she despises the way they treat girls.

  There is an apparent duality in how she sees herself, and in how she sorts her different personas by tasks and traits: “When I am lifting a heavy carpet, my neighbors say I am strong. Then I feel like a boy. When I clean the house, I feel like a girl. Because I know that’s what girls do.”

  Zahra is the one who moves around the most in her family. She runs all the errands, to the tailor and to the bazaar. She fills the heavy gas canisters and carries them home. Her male side is physical: “Boys are stronger than girls. They can do anything and they are free. When I was a child, everyone was beating me and I cried. But now, if anyone tries to beat me, I hit back. And when I am playing football, and do something wrong, they yell at me. Then, I yell back.”

  “Why do you think you feel like both?”

  “My mother always tells me that I am a girl. But my neighbors call me a boy. I feel like both. People see me as both. I feel happy I am both. If my mother had not told anybody, nobody would know. I say I am Naweed to those who don’t know.”

  It is a name that means “good news.”

  “What do you want us to call you?”

  She shrugs. It would be impolite to ask anything of visitors.

  Zahra has a very clear idea of what sets boys and girls apart. More than anything, she explains, it is in how they live their lives: “Girls dress up. They wear makeup. Boys are more simple. I like that. I hate the long hair that girls have. I wouldn’t have the patience to brush it, to clean it.… And girls talk too much. They gossip, you know? Men talk, but not as much as women. Women are always sitting between four walls and talk. Talk, talk. That is what they do. Because they have no freedom. They can’t go outside and do things. So they just keep talking.”

  After a pause, she adds, “I hate the scarf. I hate to put it on. And the long shirts. And the bra. I refuse to wear it.” Her cheeks blush a little again, and the hair falls into her eyes as she turns her head away.

  “Girls like to have beautiful houses, to color them inside and outside,” she continues. “The boys don’t care about houses or discussing how to decorate them. Men leave the home anyway, and go for work. There are things that women like to do: to cook, to clean, to make themselves beautiful. To go to weddings. Fashion. Men are not interested in any of that.”

  Men, on the other hand, like to race cars, hang out with their friends, and fight. Zahra describes the ultimate man as Kabul’s current favorite character on television: Jack Bauer on 24. To her and the other boys in the neighborhood, the American action hero symbolizes a real Afghan. A true warrior. The payoff is in every episode: When the hero is beaten half to death, he will rise again and protect his honor. Just like an Afghan, in Zahra’s view, he never fears death. And he never stops fighting.

  I try something cheap: “So are boys better than girls?”

  Zahra shakes her head. Absolutely not.

  “Girls are more intelligent than boys, because they work more in the house and they can do more things. Men are suited for different kinds of work. They are intelligent, too, but they can do fewer things. All the work that boys can do, women can do, too. I know it, because I do it. The work that women do, men cannot do.”

  The conservative older brother turned somewhat progressive teenage girl has a self-perfected logic: “You know, women can be men, too. Like me.”

  Hard to argue with that.

  WE APPROACH A sand pit where some young men have gathered around a three-wheeled motorbike for rent. Zahra wants to go for a ride. She strolls over to the man in charge and presses some coins into his palm. On the bike, she begins to loop around us at high speed. She breaks out in a large smile when she feels the wind on her face. As she passes us, her hair sprayed in every direction, she stands up on the bike, for effect. When I take her picture, a neighborhood boy yells at Setareh: “Tell her not to think she’s a boy. She’s a girl.”

  Climbing off the bike, Zahra says that the boy is h
er friend and we need not worry. He knows her secret, but he treats her like a fellow boy. “If someone beats me, he protects me.”

  “Have you been attacked?”

  “It happens.”

  In reality, Zahra’s freedom of movement has become more limited in the past few years. She is feeling increasingly isolated. Girls have begun to shy away from her, and young boys like to challenge her. She is not entirely safe in her own neighborhood anymore, where more people seem to have an issue with how she looks. What used to be freedom in disguise is now a slight provocation to those who know. And lately, more seem to know. Zahra suspects her mother has a part in that—the family used to protect her secret, but in the last few years, her mother has tried a variety of urging, begging, and demanding that Zahra look more feminine. It is time, her mother argues, for Zahra to become a girl and develop into the woman inside of her. But Zahra still resists. Her small freedoms have become curtailed but in her mind it still beats being a woman. The idea that she would go on to repeat the life of her mother, with a husband and a long line of children, seems absurd and horrifying to her.

  AS WE SIT down under a tree in a park, Zahra suddenly goes quiet when her Pashto teacher walks by and gives her a long stare. The female teachers in Zahra’s school have never commented on her appearance. They have seen her putting on a head scarf that is a required part of her uniform as she walks up the steps, only to rip it off the minute she walks out of class. But recently her Pashto teacher told her that what she is doing is wrong, and that it is shameful for her not to look like a girl and cover her head at all times.

  As with many social issues and rules on how people should live their lives, mullahs in Afghanistan take different views on whether God has anything at all to say about bacha posh. It’s not a crime to dress as the other gender, but it could possibly be viewed as a sin. According to one Islamic hadith, the prophet Muhammad “damned those men who look like women and those women who look like men and stated ‘expel them from homes.’ ”

  Moses reportedly said something similar in Deuteronomy 22:5. “A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.” Still, the interpretation of both of these passages, which could be condemnations of cross-dressing, are not agreed upon by religious scholars. God and the prophets may, in fact, have had no real problem at all with cross-dressers of either sex. It is important to note as well that these writings speak of “men” and “women”—not boys and girls.

  But in Afghanistan, references to Islam can be made by anyone, at any time, for any purpose. No matter the issue, a person may cite an appropriately vague hadith, said to represent the thousands of (often contradictory) opinions and life events of the prophet Muhammad, or a recollection of what a mullah has once said. Such determinations—and they are usually exclaimed with absolute certainty—of what is Islamic or not are liberally distributed by Afghans both young and old, by those who hold university degrees and by those who use only their thumbprints to sign documents. The constant references to religion lead many Afghans to believe that any new rule imposed on them is indeed mandatory for being “a good Muslim.”

  The crippling catch-22 in Afghanistan is that as soon as someone refers to God, the prophet Muhammad, the Koran, or anything Islamic at all, anyone who questions that statement is also potentially questioning God. And in that, he or she could be suspected or accused of blasphemy. To avoid that potential danger, most contradictory and at times confusing interpretations of Islam remain unchallenged in Afghanistan. The Koran can be read in many ways, even by those who can read, and there are thousands of hadiths used to express different rules. So the scope for interpreting Islamic law and putting it into context is immense, according to scholars.

  As there is no strictly organized clergy, the very title of mullah is open to anyone who is viewed as having some religious credentials. The mullah can be an illiterate farmer who doubles as a religious leader for the village. Considering that a mullah can be the one to declare a newborn girl a son in order to help out a son-less family, some religious leaders not only condone bacha posh but also encourage and accept it when deemed necessary.

  Zahra is not aware of any specific Islamic rules on the issue of what to wear; nor does she know of one interpretation or another of them. But she is an observant Muslim who prays, and she told her Pashto teacher what made sense to her: “It is my body and you should leave me alone.”

  As the teacher muttered and walked away, several girls at school were astonished that Zahra had spoken back to a male teacher on a religious issue. Some were told by their parents to stay away from her after that.

  Still, Zahra has gained some popularity for one reason: She is the closest many of the students in the all-girls school will come to conversing with a boy of the same age. At times, they let Zahra stand in for their movie-star fantasy, pinching her cheeks, joking to one another that she is “such a cute boy.” Sometimes, a giggly girl will want to take the play further, asking Zahra to hold her hand and declare that they are engaged.

  Zahra doesn’t really like any of those games, but she plays along, so as not to alienate anyone further.

  WHEN WE CLIMB out of the car on another day, Zahra greets us on her bicycle. Smiling and waving, she runs up to the car and opens the door on my side. When she leans in, I instinctively do the same and kiss her three times on the cheeks, in a classic Afghan greeting, before I realize my mistake. It’s used mostly as a greeting for people of the same gender. Three boys are standing behind another car looking at us. I apologize to Zahra, who is very polite: It’s not a problem. I had completely forgotten the routine we had almost perfected last time: a firm handshake, followed by the American high five that Zahra always seems to execute more smoothly than I do.

  At the house, Zahra’s mother, Asma, has prepared an overwhelming lunch. She and Zahra’s father, Samir, want to thank us for our interest in their daughter. For this occasion, Asma has been cooking for two days, and on the table is a big serving plate of fried rice with slices of carrot and onion, chunks of meat and raisins, and the special dried herbs sent from Andkhoy hidden inside the rice, Uzbek-style. The quorma is luxurious: a whole chicken cooked in tomato sauce. Manto are carefully folded dumplings with minced meat inside, steamed in a cooker with onions. There is a large plate of minced tomato, cucumber, and onions that have been tossed with thick mayonnaise. All food is prepared with the expensive vegetable oil used for special occasions, marked “USA” and “Vitamin A fortified.” It is a World Food Program item openly sold at one of the bazaars, and considered to be better than the Pakistani versions. The dessert has already been set out; it’s firiny, a creamy version of rice pudding with a shivering poison-green Jell-O on top. Pepsi cans are lined up next to drying oranges and darkened bananas. The fruit is a rare treat from Pakistan.

  Samir, in a great mood and still wearing his well-worn khaki flight uniform, has been dismissed early from his work piloting helicopters for the Afghan air force. He balances his youngest, a fourteen-month-old girl, on one knee. The baby is wearing a red jumpsuit and has little hair; without the announcement of her gender, no observer would know for sure. Dressing little boys and girls in blue or pink was a marketing gimmick invented in the United States in the forties. Before then, all children were mostly dressed in white, with lace and ruffles. Pink was actually regarded as the more masculine, fiery color before it came to be the signifying color for a baby girl.

  A three-year-old boy tries to climb up onto his father’s other knee, only to be gently brushed away. The other siblings move around the table; they are too young to be invited to sit with the grown-ups and too old to earn a place in someone’s lap. Still, Samir gives everyone a good chunk of attention. He beams when speaking of his children. “I am so happy I have a big family. The dream of every parent is for their children to give them grandchildren. And if they don’t have children, it’s a big problem. I was lucky.”

  Samir smiles at
Asma. Nine children puts her above Afghan women’s national average of six surviving children. Zahra, at fifteen, is number three, with four sisters and four brothers.

  Asma and Samir are first cousins in an arranged marriage. According to Samir: “It was both our parents’ choice. And Asma’s choice.”

  Asma shouts in protest. “Neee neeee! It was you who came to my home a hundred times and told me you wanted to marry me.”

  Samir chuckles. “You wanted to marry me—I still have your love letters.” He turns to me: Asma found him irresistible; is that so hard to imagine? “I will show you a picture from my youth, and you will see I was very handsome.”

  He corrects himself: They were lucky, too, in what their parents decided for them. Most marriages are not like theirs. The big family, however, was Asma’s doing. “It was your fault,” Samir throws out in the direction of his wife, grinning. “Maybe you want another one?”

  She grins back at him. There are four sons in the family already and her work is more than done. “I have told you the factory is closed. I have put a lock on it!” Their youngest was unplanned. When Asma went to the doctor for a sore throat, she learned that she was three months pregnant.

  Samir roars with laughter as he is reminded of her surprise, and starts to shovel up rice with a fork over to his own plate. Another child would be hard. They have almost outgrown the apartment already and cannot afford to go anywhere else. They rented it from a wealthier relative when they returned from Peshawar after the Taliban years. Their time in Pakistan was not bad—the family ran a small carpet business there. But during those years Samir was unable to fly, and it was almost unbearable for him. He was never quite a carpet dealer, like his relatives.